My Pages

Sunday, 4 November 2012

When I wrote my thousandth blog on the 31st of August 2008, I really
did think I would reach the next milestone in a shorter span of time, I did but
just by a few months and it has been hard going.

2007 was my most prolific year, I wrote 400 blogs, I have not managed to
write up to 300 a year since then. It has not been for the want of trying, I just
have my seasons. Sometimes I could write up to 5 blogs in a day and at other times
I barely get the same written in a fortnight.

What has happened

Since then, I think I have been more introspective and expressive about my
private life, the struggles of being diagnosed with cancer, the treatment, the recuperation
and recovery to a status I once knew, it is an ever unfolding story of experiences
many of which looked so insignificant when they happened but on recollection gets
woven into dare I say, a riveting tale.

In 2010 to early 2011, I had to move my blog completely to Blogger because
the company providing the service decided hosting a blogging service was no more
fun for them, it was not an easy task and I lost quite a few pictures and all the
comments that were posted there over 7 years - sometimes patronising the services
of a local company is not the best option if you are doing something for the long
term.

On the 8th of December 2012, I will have been blogging for 9 years, in that
time, I have seen bloggers come and go, many left in abeyance or abandoned and sadly
the loss of a friend who I persuaded to start blogging in 2006 in the Dana Air plane
crash on the 3rd of June 2012.

I now consider this blog a body of work, a journal of views and a compendium
of ideas that range from bizarre to acceptable, that is the nature of the beast.
My Thought Picnics with their freeform sharing of thoughts and meditations, the
rage and anger about Nigeria, the pulling down of altars of outrageous practices
in customs, traditions, religion and creeds, my espousal of rights in all their
ramifications as the critical to our humanity and much else along with my sometime
futile attempts at humour make up what I hope will be the record of my footsteps
in the sands of time.

Keeping my own faith

I wrote this in my 1,000th blog; I have tried to stay
true to Akin playing on the English meaning of the word pertaining
to likeness rather than the Yoruba meaning which is more like a heroic warrior,
I don't do heroics just the occasional histrionics.

It is about things too concerning to ignore and
it is still essentially similar to what is known, compatible to what is expected
and related to the unexpected.

I must also note that since then engagements on Twitter
and Facebook have recently provided material I have blogged about from the gentle
interactions to the robust exchanges, I rarely if ever suffer fools gladly but never
as the first resort.

Gratitude

In closing, I want to thank all my readers and followers
who have through the years found interest in my views, shared them with others or
left comments, you are all appreciated. I also must thank those who on reading my
blogs reached out to help in innumerable ways to bless me in times of hardship and
difficulty - you are all the wind beneath my wings.

For the gift of expression and the nurturing of the
same by reason of the many influences in my life, I am thankful to God, to my parents,
to my siblings, to my friends and even to the fiends who cannot stand me, to Nigeria
of fond memories and the Nigeria that makes my heart ache, to England and what makes
me English, to the Netherlands that gave me a new lease of life in so many ways
and the adventure of life and to the vivid imagination that makes me wonder if I
really did write this when I return to read it sometime in the future - this is
the toast to life and with hope never diminished, maybe the 3,000th blog.